"Till she was nineteen and I twenty-nine, I suppose we were the happiest couple under the broad heaven. Then she let down her skirt and put up her hair and made her _début_. (I should say that she lived alone with her old father, a retired East Indian of the time of John Company.) To her own surprise and my great pride--at first--she caused quite a sensation, for besides her face she had the prettiest manners possible. If you want to know what she was like you will find a miniature of her among my papers. Or perhaps it would be simpler to look at Joey. "But now the trouble began. Irene--that was her name--soon discovered an immense appetite for admiration, which was quite natural and excusable. (One can't blame a girl for making all the runs she can while her innings lasts; God knows, it is short enough!) But presently she could not do without it. She was always 'asking for it,' as they say nowadays. Sometimes she made herself rather conspicuous, and people began to smile at her. I ground my teeth, and, finally, at the least suitable moment, I put my oar in. I expostulated. No, I _didn't_ expostulate: I simply _ordered_ her to mend her ways, and generally acted the Grand Turk and proud proprietor rolled into one. My word, Hughie, she was furious! There had never been any definite engagement between us, and she opened her defence by saying so, pat. It happened at a ball, where she had been making herself rather noticeable with a seedy ruffian--half actor, half poet--called Gaymer, against whom I had been fool enough to warn her. She informed me that she was her own mistress, and that I was an officious busybody. If I had had the sense to tell her there and then that I loved her more than all the world, and that I was jealous of the very ground she walked on,--let alone the people she spoke to,--she would have melted at once, I swear; for she was as impulsive and generous as a child, and she loved me, too, I _know_. If I had even lost my temper and called her a brazen hussy, she would have forgiven me in time: a woman regards a remark like that as a sort of compliment. _But_--I smiled indulgently, shrugged my shoulders, and said that she would look at these things differently when she was older. "That did it. Apparently there is only one crime in this world more heinous than telling an old woman that she is old, and that is to tell a young woman that she is young. Irene got straight up and left me sitting, and went home without ever looking in my direction again that night.